The modular power system.
Must of the previous bugs have been ironed out over a few of the patches but we did find one of the reasons why its still not quite working like its suppose to. While the power transfer beams can now kinda working properly they don't completely work. The only two outstanding bugs so to speak are.
When a power transfer beam is activated it is suppose to send 5 ticks of power. Each tick is 0.5 seconds. Then it spends 2.5 seconds in cool down for a total of a 5 second cycle. So most people use 2 alternating power transfer beams to constantly provide power. The current bug is that when the power transfer beam is activated by logic only 4 out of those 5 ticks actually happen so your missing one whole tick of power being used and transferred to the target. The power transfer beam does the 5 full ticks like its suppose to when controlled by the hotbar which you can't do for modular power supplies. So you might need to make the power supply beams an extra 25% larger so the 4 ticks it does sent covers power transferred for 5 ticks. Since I'm expecting this bug to be fixed some time I've left my modular power cores designed as is and assumed that I get 80% of its actual power transfer is suppose to be so I don't have to replace all of them when the bug is fixed.
The second bug is generally there is significant lag associated with the modular power core being docked to the ship its supplying power too. Someone else found this by having 50 modular power cores floating in space aimed at the same target didn't generate to much lag but if you docked them all to the same ship even with the rail speed controller set to 0 and a spare space around each one it still generates quite a bit of extra lag compared to having them floating in space.
Constructing a modular power core
To construct a modular power core just use a bunch of power reactors to create the required designed power recharge rate, Have a little extra above what your going to transfer. The power storage should be a bit over half of that design power recharge rate. Divide the design power recharge rate by 600 for the number of power transfer beam modules you need per power supply beam You need two beams set to activate 2.5 seconds apart with logic alternating. I usually have mine with a wireless link I can use to turn on and off the module. The power your ship receives is 80% of the power consumed. Then because of the logic bug only actually gets 80% of that so only 64% gets transferred over the 5 seconds. Will go to 80% once bug is fixed.
Modifications to improve efficiency with bug (breaks when bug is fixed)
If you want to increase the current efficiency you divide the designed power regen rate by 240 to get the power supply beam blocks x 2 beams, it will transfer the missing tick of power to get you the 80%. But for safety margin your power storage should be around 75% of your power regen rate. However when the bug is fixed these modified power cores will be broken as they will overdraw power and go into power drain mode temporary turning off the power reactors and drawing power from the main ship. Under these circumstances the power modules actually drain power from the main system rather than supply it.
Modular shields
For modular shield systems it depends on what your trying to do with them. If your trying to increase your shield regen rate that won't work currently and by the looks isn't a bug with current game mechanics. I could be wrong about that, it depends on which way the game is going to be developed. The shield module takes the same combat shield regen penalty when its using the shield supply beam. Essentially the shield regeneration rate, under combat conditions, has its regen rate reduced to between 5% to 10% with 5% when almost fully recharged and 10% when almost down. And even though the shield module isn't shooting weapons or being shot at it still takes the penalty for combat just by firing the shield transfer beam. Note there is a current bug when your ship is in combat regen mode the HUD still shows you as having your full regen rate with is incorrect. So while your shield module may be reporting full shield recharge while transferring shields to the main ship its lying.... By the looks of the current starmade system all tanking is by buff tanking and not active recharge tanking. High regen rates would break this so your shields are really designed to regenerate properly between fights. It will give you minor regen during fights but there would have to be a large discrepancy between ship sizes to make it a major factor in general.
If your looking for multiple sections of shields on a ship that would work but most people don't bother. The main thing about shields is they defend from damage in all directions so splitting them up negates the main advantage it has over armour.
If you are looking at creating a reserve shield module that you can transfer to the main shields when low to deceive another player into almost thinking your dead then reinforcing the shields that will work. Most people don't bother however as that is something else to do and remember while fighting. It also only works against players. Note only 80% of those shields gets transferred across. Due to the that most people are better off with just more shield blocks on the main ship.
Note while there is a penalty for using main shield blocks its generally not to big an issue. The way the current game mechanics work its useful in a team fight environment where you can use your shields to reinforce the shields of team mates that are taking a beating cause there out in front of you where you can see and use the shield supply beam on them.
At just a bit over 45,000 shield blocks its efficiency drops to 80% of base which is 88shields per block. Which is 3.96million shields. If your using less than this just go with one bunch of shield capacitors. If its above you might make it more efficient by splitting that up but to give you and idea 1.21million shield blocks the efficiency only drops to 82 per block which is 99.4million shields the penalty is small enough not many people bother trying to design around it.
The shield capacity, C, of a ship with N number of capacitors, can be found by the formula:
C = ( [ N to the power of 0.9791797578 ] x 110) + 220.
